Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been practiced by the Chinese people for 2-3 millennia. It also currently covers the practice and medicinal materials used by Tibetan, Mongolian and other ethnic minorities. This system with its materials has been spread and adopted by other Asian countries such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
In TCM, herbal medicine is considered as the primary therapeutic modality of internal medicine. Chinese medicinal materials have been recorded in various pharmacopoeia. One of the classical references Bencao Gangmu written by Li Shi Zhen in the late 14th Century contains about 2,500 items of herbs and other products (animals and minerals). The official pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China (1995 ed.) contains 2,375 items of medicinal materials.
While the efficacy of TCM treatment, for example with herbal medicine, is evidenced by thousands of years of empirical yet undeniable success in the management of a panoply of medical conditions, little scientific research has been done on Chinese herbal medicines. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that, unlike in Western medicine, in TCM the same disease is often treated differently for different people due to variations in constitution and specific symptoms. There has been little research regarding which specific herbal ingredients have been shown to be particularly effective in treating various diseases. For many diseases, Chinese herbal therapies may increase the effectiveness of modern drug treatments, reduce their side effects, or replace them completely.
For example, Chinese wormwood (qinghao) was the source for the discovery of artemisinin, which is now used worldwide to treat multi-drug resistant strains of falciparum malaria, and is also under investigation as an anti-cancer agent. It was one of many traditional Chinese medicines used for treating malaria. With the many herbal ingredients currently in use for treating various medical afflictions under TCM, there is a need for a system for identifying potential herbal ingredients that have been identified under TCM to be effective in treating various diseases or conditions. To date, there has not been a satisfactory system for doing so.